Tom Potokar recalls patients at Shifa hospital in Gaza returning for consultations after limb surgery to remediate gun and bomb injuries. Their apparent recovery belies dangerous underlying infections — part of a growing trend as conflict spreads from the Middle East into Ukraine and beyond.

“They are wandering around on crutches and not at death’s door,” says Potokar, chief surgeon at the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC). “But their wounds are not healthy: the edges are broken down and pus is leaking out. You know that’s a major issue. Often, it can look like nothing too much, but it’s a bit like an iceberg.”

He has been forced to provide extensive follow-up treatment, reopening and cleaning wounds and prescribing powerful antibiotics to tackle infections that can prove lethal to the patients and transmissible to others.